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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 6, 2017 11:20:01 GMT
Yes, it's a very bad joke!
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Post by Séamus on Aug 6, 2017 11:44:38 GMT
Yes, it's a very bad joke! Reminds me of the time I was sitting with two priests and one mentioned that he was given a ticket to accompany old Miss so-and-so to a gathering during which she'll be awarded first prize for her performing budgerigars. After a second or two I asked 'was that a joke?' They both burst out laughing. It wasn't. I should have put ST Lorcán, shouldn't I? I didn't mention St Brigid because people dispute her historicity, but her devotion was widespread around Europe and still is. I refuse to believe that devotion to her was just an unhistorical offshoot from the druid religion. She was obviously someone of great importance to the people of the time. Portugal is one place that claimed to have her head, it's probably like the situation with John the Baptist who, I'm told, had the heads in Rome - but it shows her importance. Another Irish-born American who had a great impact was labour-leader Mary Jones.... But you could go on forever
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Post by cato on Aug 6, 2017 12:15:47 GMT
Around the turn of the last century I attempted to teach some students the concept of greatness and we organised a school poll to nominate the greatest Irish person ever. Mary Robinson topped the poll with some soccer player coming in second. Whoever said the young were our greatest resource?
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 6, 2017 12:39:14 GMT
What did you teach them about greatness?
The young are an interesting subject. There's some talk of Generation Z being more conservative than their immediate elders.
When I look back at my own youth, I'm flabbergasted. I remember a time I considered "Imagine" by John Lennon to be the greatest song ever. I hate that tinny, insipid, life-hating dirge now. I vacillated between being ardently anti-nationalist and ardently pro-nationalist. When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid, as Dubya once said. And yet I was extremely conservative in some ways, even back then.
I work in UCD Library and I've spent a decade and a half serving undergraduates. I feel a strange conflict in that I know they would be overwhelmingly pro-abortion (eighty per cent in one poll) and have other left-wing attitudes...and yet, I really, really like them. The young students are much nicer than the mature students, who are grumpy and difficult and entitled.
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Post by cato on Aug 6, 2017 13:04:55 GMT
I think I used a reverse technique where I explained what greatness was not , trying a via negativa route and attempting to differentiate greatness from celebrity or fame. Anyways it was a spectacular failure.
As a culture or society we don't do grandeur or greatness anymore which is our loss. Maybe it's part of a democratic spirit , suspicion of authority or just a general dumbing down and expecting mediocrity while loudly proclaiming we value individuality. Ultimately it is a spiritual quality but I have rarely come across it in spiritual writing.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 6, 2017 13:25:55 GMT
Going back to Yeats, I like the first verse of his autobiographical poem "What Then?"
His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man. He thought the same and lived by rule All his twenties crammed with toil.
I'm reminded as well, of something Chesterton wrote about Dickens:
The character of the kind old Jew in "Our Mutual Friend" (a needless and unconvincing character) was actually introduced because some Jewish correspondent complains that the bad old Jew in "Oliver Twist" conveyed the suggestion that all Jews were bad. The principle is so light-headedly absurd that it is hard to imagine any literary man submitting to it for an instant. If ever he invented a bad auctioneer he must immediately balance him with a good auctioneer; if he should have conceived an unkind philanthropist, he must on the spot, with whatever natural agony and toil, imagine a kind philanthropist. The complaint is frantic; yet Dickens, who tore people in pieces for much fairer complaints, liked this complaint of his Jewish correspondent. It pleased him to be mistaken for a public arbiter: it pleased him to be asked (in a double sense) to judge Israel.
I think it is true that there is a notion of "greatness" which one might legitimately aspire to, especially if it implies (as it does) an ethic of public service and responsibility to the nation. I do think it's a shame this has declined. Everybody wants to be "just an ordinary guy" now.
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Post by cato on Aug 6, 2017 13:44:58 GMT
Isn't part of our problem the idolatry around the the shrine of Equality? Excellence , courage and vision are components of greatness but we downplay anything that suggests some people are better or superior or smarter or holier.
Equality before the law or in the eyes of God is a given but otherwise it is a modern liberal shibboleth that deep down we know or suspect is wishful thinking.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 6, 2017 13:58:50 GMT
The concept of equality is one I grapple with myself. I do want to hold onto something more than equality of opportunity or equality before the law or equality in God's eyes. Perhaps "fraternity" is a better term for what I'm thinking of, though. Fellow-feeling. I definitely think the cult of equality is incredibly destructive.
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Post by assisi on Aug 12, 2017 12:31:27 GMT
I cannot think of any outstanding Irishman or Irishwoman to nominate.
I do, though, admire tough Irish who do their difficult jobs quietly and don't generally complain. I like sportsmen like Sean Kelly the cyclist, involved in one of the toughest sports known. Or Sean Fallon, the Celtic player and manager, a man of faith who hailed from Sligo and was as tough as nails and played down his part in their winning the European Cup in 1967. St. Columb (Colmcille) would be another worth admiring.
If the forum is a bit quiet I think it would be interesting to start a thread on Irish anti-heroes. For me this would include characters such as Bob Geldof (articulate, profane and opinionated in a scattergun type of way). Sinead O'Connor (Sadly more to be pitied than disliked perhaps). And Bono (a north Dubliner with a mid-Atlantic drawl).
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 12, 2017 12:46:42 GMT
Anti-heroes, hmmm. I presume you don't just mean hate figures, but Irish people who have something to recommend them but are deeply disappointing or maddening in other ways?
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Post by cato on Aug 12, 2017 16:08:00 GMT
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin the darling of the Irish Times and part time bishop of Dublin springs to mind!
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 12, 2017 17:27:39 GMT
He is the worst-- his cowardly intervention during the marriage referendum is something that should never be forgotten. He seemed more worried about "homophobia" than defending marriage.
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Post by cato on Aug 14, 2017 20:22:15 GMT
I was thinking the good people of the kingdom of kerry have a good claim on the greatest Irishman ever.
St Brendan the Navigator is reputed to have discovered Iceland and the USA before all those other pesky Europeans . I wonder could we lodge a territorial claim?
On the exploring theme Tom Crean the polar explorer and the subject of an ever running play hails from Kerry . William Melville the head of the UK secret service and the original M is a citizen of Sneem. I wonder was there a Victorian 007?
Lord Kitchener of Khartoum the war minister during the great war and the face on the most iconic famous poster ever is from Kerry (Che Guevara eat your heart out) The bold Dr Eamonn Casey , one of Ireland's episcopal social justice warriors (who bravely burned his BA when the dark lord Ronald Reagan invaded Ireland) wrecked Pugin's masterpiece in Killarney Cathedral , killed numerous Kerry sheepdogs, set up Irelands most sucessful socialist lobby group Trocaire, and finally helped collapse 1400 years of Irish catholicism and a son of Kerry might merit the coveted title too.
Someone mentioned that other Kerry boy Daniel O Connell who was the founder of the pro-choice movement in the 1840s.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 14, 2017 20:31:41 GMT
The bold Dr Eamonn Casey , one of Ireland's episcopal social justice warriors (who bravely burned his BA when the dark lord Ronald Reagan invaded Ireland) wrecked Pugin's masterpiece in Killarney Cathedral , killed numerous Kerry sheepdogs, set up Irelands most sucessful socialist lobby group Trocaire, and finally helped collapse 1400 years of Irish catholicism and a son of Kerry might merit the coveted title too. I hear he was a great man for a bit of an ould sing-song though.
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Post by cato on Aug 14, 2017 20:52:01 GMT
Thats linked to his massacre of the Kerry sheep dogs if Christy Moore is a reliable source. He was the sort of bishop Papa Franceso I would approve of.
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